More erroneous evacuation alerts were sent to tens of thousands of residents overnight, prompting waves of criticism from people already on edge from the Southland fires, and the county’s emergency management director insisted Friday it is a “top priority” to determine what is causing the bogus notifications.
Kevin McGowan, director of the county Office of Emergency Management, stressed that the alerts are “not human driven.”
“There is no one sitting at a desk right now initiating emergency alerts,” McGowan said during a Friday morning briefing. “… They are not being activated or initiated by a person.”
He said he is coordinating with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to “resolve this issue and find the root cause.”
The first erroneous alert was sent out around 4 p.m. Thursday, shortly after the Kenneth Fire erupted in the West Hills area. The alert about evacuation warnings was only supposed to be sent to people in the affected area near that fire, but instead, it was sent to cell phones throughout most of the county, including residents in the South Bay, the Westside, downtown Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley, even as far away as Orange County.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn quickly posted a statement on X saying the warning “was mistakenly issued countywide due to a technical error” and “a correction will be issued shortly.” The message was only intended “for the areas impacted by the Kenneth Fire in Woodland Hills.”
A correction message was sent out countywide about 15 minutes later. Law enforcement and government agencies across the region also issued statements assuring people the message was in error.
McGowan issued a statement later Thursday saying the agency is “committed to sharing accurate information.”
However, another erroneous message was sent out around 4 a.m. Friday, again intended for people in the Kenneth Fire burn area but transmitted instead to people across the region, even in San Bernardino County.
McGowan on Friday morning said “this is my top priority” to determine what technical error is causing the erroneous alerts.
“I implore everyone to not disable the messages on your phone. This is extremely frustrating, painful and scary, but these alert tools have saved lives during this emergency,” he said. “Not receiving an alert can be a consequence of life and death.”
Later Thursday, the county Office of Emergency Management issued a statement saying the original erroneous alert was sent from the county Emergency Operations Center to a correctly targeted area, but “after it left the EOC, the alert was erroneously sent to nearly 10 million residents across the county.”
The county’s outside software vendor for the alerts, Genasys, was working to determine why it was erroneously sent, and the company stated that “it has added safeguards to its software.”
The county OEM also said it was working with federal officials to determine how “echoes” of the original message continued going out to phones in the county.
“Our preliminary assessment is that these recurring erroneous notifications are due to issues with telecommunications systems, likely due to the fires’ impacts on cellular towers. We are working actively with FEMA and industry partners to identify and resolve these issues,” according to the OEM.
McGowan suggested Friday morning that people who receive the alerts go online to verify the information at alertla.org or lacounty.gov/emergency, or call 211.
County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, however, expressed frustration at the situation Friday morning, noting that people shouldn’t have to go online to verify emergency alerts.
“It is frustrating because we are asking people to trust us,” Barger said, adding that the problem needs to be fixed immediately.
“Don’t think we are taking this lightly,” she said. “I’m not. And I know that my residents aren’t. … The frustration you’re hearing from me is based on the frustration I’m hearing from my constituents.”